by J. C. Diem
A short hallway ended at a set of stairs that led to the upper floor. A door on the left opened to a dining room and one on the right contained the living room. Leaving our luggage in the hallway, we followed Mark through the dining room into the kitchen.
The house was fully furnished, but the furniture wasn’t exactly new. The glimpse that I’d had of the TV hadn’t exactly been impressive. It was much smaller than the ones I’d become used to after joining the team. Fortunately, I didn’t spend a lot of time watching movies or weekly shows.
The dining table could seat six and was worn and scratched. The kitchen appliances were modern and the room was clean, although it wasn’t up to Mark’s usual standards. My only concern was the sleeping arrangements. I hoped there would be enough beds for us all. The only person who I’d be happy to share a bed with was currently having serious doubts about our relationship.
₪₪₪
Chapter Thirteen
With the food put away, we were free to check out the bedrooms. Kala snatched up her bags and raced upstairs so she could be the first to claim a bed. I followed at a more sedate pace, glad that Zeus wouldn’t have any trouble climbing these stairs.
“It looks like we’re going to be roomies again,” Kala stated when I reached the second floor. She’d taken a quick look inside each of the rooms. “There are only three bedrooms,” she told me. “One has a Queen sized bed and the other two have two single beds each.”
“Please tell me there’s more than one bathroom,” Flynn said as he trudged up the stairs. “I’ve shared one with you before and it’s always a nightmare.”
“If you count the closet sized bathroom in Mark’s room, there’s two.”
“I can already tell that this mission is going to be fun,” I muttered. I’d never had to share a bathroom with three other people before. Kala frequently spent an hour soaking in the tub and I could foresee arguments ahead.
“Do you care which room we use?” Kala asked me.
“Nope. I don’t have any particular preference.”
“We’ll take the one closest to the bathroom,” she decided and turned left. The bathroom was the first room and our room was the second one along. The boys would have the first room to the right of the stairs. Mark’s was at the far end of the hall.
“Spacious,” I said, rolling my eyes at how tiny the room was when I stepped inside. I took the bed on the left since Kala had already dumped her bags on the other one. The closet was so small that it could barely hold our jackets let alone all of our clothes. There were two dressers and we spent a few minutes unpacking. The scent of coffee drew us downstairs when we were done.
“Outta my way,” Kala said and elbowed her way past me. Her need for caffeine was even stronger than mine.
Mark had made enough drinks for everyone, knowing that we’d all be craving it by now. We sat on two long, worn couches around a coffee table that had seen better days.
His phone rang as he was taking his first sip. It was his police contact again. “What news do you have?” he asked.
“Nothing good, I’m afraid,” RJ replied heavily. “Two more children have been reported missing.”
“When?”
“I just heard the calls come through a few minutes ago.”
“Email me the details.”
They hung up and Mark pulled his tablet out of an inner pocket of his jacket. Seconds later, an email appeared with the addresses of the latest missing children. He’d already marked the locations where the first four kids had been taken on a map on his tablet. He now added the two new addresses to it. “The disappearances seem to be completely random,” he said. The houses were in six different areas of the city.
“What’s the plan?” Reece asked.
“Let’s split up into two teams. We’ll see if we can pick up anything at either of the two newest houses to be targeted. Reece and Flynn, you’re with me. Kala, try to keep Lexi out of trouble.”
She saluted him sharply. “I’ll do my best, boss, but you know how easy it is for her to get into trouble.” She grinned at the sour look I gave her.
Zeus was already on his feet and padded towards the door. Mark had fed him and he was ready for action. Reece took the wheel, as always. He dropped Kala, Zeus and me off near the first address. As soon as we stepped out of the SUV, Kala went on full alert.
“What is it?” I asked, then smelled what she’d already picked up.
“Werelions,” she said. “Two of them.”
“Did you know there were shifters in Lilydale?”
“Nope.” Her tawny eyes gleamed in the dark as we headed towards the house where one of the kids had been snatched.
“You don’t think they were responsible for the missing children, do you?” I hadn’t read anything in the archives about shifters stealing children, but so little was known about us that it could be possible.
“I highly doubt it. They wouldn’t have any reason to kidnap kids. We prefer to chase down our prey and children wouldn’t be much of a challenge. Lions would be more likely to target a healthy young man than a kid if they’ve gone rogue.”
Zeus followed the werelions’ scent to a side street and returned when I called him. It was interesting that other feline shifters were near, but we had a job to do and we had to focus on our task.
Kala sent a last lingering glance at the side street then trotted to catch up to me. “I’ve never met an actual pure blood werelion before,” she said.
“Do you know much about them?”
“Only what I’ve read in the archives. The PIA doesn’t seem to know much about any species of shifters.”
“I thought you found the archives boring.”
“I was curious about my kind,” she said sheepishly. “Not that lions think other felines are their equals. Especially not bitten shifters. We’re just lowly misfits to them.”
“It sounds like lions and wolves have a lot in common,” I said wryly.
“All pure bloods are snobs, no matter what their species.”
Two cop cars were parked out front of the house when we reached it. The officers had finished questioning the distraught parents and were now knocking on the neighbors’ doors. We waited for them to be halfway down the street before we moved in closer.
Kala wrinkled her nose when we neared the house. “Do you smell that?”
“I can smell something weird. Whatever it is, it isn’t human.” Zeus put his nose to the ground and gave me his opinion. “Zeus says he can smell fresh dirt and rotten meat.”
Her eyebrows went up, but she wasn’t surprised. “What have we encountered in the past that smells like that combination?”
“Zombies,” I said and she nodded in agreement. “It doesn’t really smell like the undead to me.” I also couldn’t pick up any of the usual signs that a zombie had been near. There was no green fog or the sense of dread that I usually felt.
We rounded the house and crept up to the window that had been forced open. Whatever had opened it had been strong enough to break the lock, but clever enough not to smash the glass and alert the parents. It definitely wasn’t zombies then.
We could hear the distraught mother and father somewhere deeper inside the house. Taking a risk, Kala slithered through the window. She returned a few moments later with a piece of clothing that had belonged to the missing kid. From the pink fabric, it was obvious that we were looking for a girl.
She knelt and held the fabric out to Zeus. “Can you ask him to follow the scent?”
“Of course.” I relayed the message to him. After a deep sniff, he put his nose down again and retraced his steps. We could have followed the trail ourselves, but his sense of smell was even better than ours while we were in our human forms. If we’d been in our were-forms we could have followed the trail without any problem at all.
We moved at a steady jog for several streets before entering a graveyard. Fortunately, it wasn’t hallowed ground. I might have been in dire trouble if the boneyard had been on church
property. As it was the numerous crosses on the headstones were excruciating to be around. The burning sensation came from deep inside me, but it was also stinging me on the outside as well now. It grew worse the deeper we moved among the graves.
“Why do we always end up in a cemetery?” Kala complained with a resigned sigh.
“We’re just lucky, I guess.” My answer was distracted. The pain was bad, but it wasn’t debilitating enough to block the sense that something strange was coming and that it was rapidly getting closer. Turning in a full circle, I couldn’t see anything approaching. Whatever it was, I knew it wasn’t zombies or humans. It was something I’d never encountered before.
Two men appeared across the street and Kala’s head whipped around. “Werelions,” she breathed. Both were tall, blond, handsome and well built. They’d caught our scent and had come to investigate. I couldn’t really blame them. We were two strange shifters in their territory. It was only natural that they’d want to see who we were and to make sure we weren’t going to be a danger to them.
“Come to me, little cougar,” one of them called and she took a step towards him.
“Kala!” I hissed in alarm. She didn’t even glance at me when I grabbed her arm.
The lion laughed and beckoned to her. “Stay out of this, lycan. She belongs to me now.” His sheer arrogance at believing he could just claim her like that was astounding.
Picking up her pace, she docilely trotted towards him. I took two steps after her then sensed the strange creatures moving to surround me. When I looked up again, Kala and the werelions were gone. Zeus whined from a combination of feeling my pain through our link and at sensing that we were in danger.
The ground trembled and I lost my balance and went down to one knee. Several pairs of hands appeared and reached for me blindly. Run! I mentally screamed at Zeus. He had no choice but to obey me or he’d be caught as well.
Grabbing my legs, the hands dragged me down. Dirt blinded me and I couldn’t see my assailants. We flowed through the earth like it was water and our journey seemed to last forever. Then we broke through into a tunnel and fell to the ground in a tangle of limbs.
Eight humanoid creatures surrounded me when I stood. The tunnel was lightless, but my night vision was excellent. At first glance I thought they were zombies after all. A mixture of both male and female, their hair was long and unkempt and they were dressed in tattered rags. It was clear that none of them had ever bathed or brushed their teeth.
While they smelled bad, their flesh wasn’t rotting. Their skin was a pale and unhealthy shade of green that I’d never seen before. They looked to each other for guidance and I realized they weren’t mindless vessels waiting for orders. Another sign that they weren’t zombies was the fact that they were breathing. With each exhale, I caught a burst of the rotten meat smell that Kala and I had picked up at the house.
I’d discovered the beings responsible for taking the children, but I still wasn’t sure what they were.
“So hungry,” one of the males moaned and rubbed his stomach. With gaunt faces and hollow cheeks, all were thin to the point of emaciation.
“You know the rules,” a female said. Their voices were rusty, as if they didn’t speak very often. “We can’t eat living flesh.” They turned to regard me again and their eyes were flat and hungry.
“Then why don’t we just kill her?” the male asked. “No one will ever know.”
His reasoning was enough for the others to reach a decision. Moving almost as fast as I could, they flung themselves on me. Taking me to the ground, they began to bite. They weren’t trying to eat me, yet. I had no doubt that would come as soon as I was dead.
I punched the male in the face and he merely shook his head then resumed trying to strangle me. Screaming in rage and pain, I managed to get my gun free and shot him in the eye. He fell and didn’t rise, but I was still outnumbered. A hand groped towards my face with the intention of blinding me. I knocked it aside and planted a bullet in the offender’s brain. Six more shots took the rest of them down. I sat up, wincing in pain until my wounds healed a few seconds later.
Changing the magazine, my hands trembled and I couldn’t make them stop. The attack had been over quickly, but the horror of nearly being bitten to death would linger. Needing to know more about the creatures, I stood and nudged the closest one over onto her back. Her remaining eye was larger than a normal human’s. Her pupil was huge, probably so she could see in the dark. Her teeth were normal enough, even if they’d never had an encounter with a toothbrush. It was hard to tell their ages beneath the layers of dirt that covered them, but they appeared to range from their early teens to their late fifties.
These things looked like they’d been human once. I had the impression that they’d lived beneath the ground for so long that they’d become something far stranger now. They clearly ate rotting flesh, but now it seemed that they’d become more than corpse thieves. They’d moved on to stealing children as well. Tompkins was right, the kids would have been killed and eaten by now.
While they would attack in numbers, they had to be cowardly if they preyed on the dead and defenseless. I’d read about creatures like this in the archives. They were indeed a cross between humans and zombies. They weren’t undead, yet they weren’t that far from it either. It seemed that I’d just been dragged down into a nest of ghouls.
₪₪₪
Chapter Fourteen
I tried calling Reece with my mind, but I couldn’t get through his barrier. Taking my cell phone out, I wasn’t surprised to see that there was no reception. I wasn’t sure how far beneath the cemetery I’d been taken. The passage had filled in behind us, leaving no trace of where we’d entered. I doubted I’d be able to dig my way back upwards, which meant I’d have to find another way out. On a good note, at least I was too far beneath the ground for the crosses on the headstones to hurt me now.
Pausing to take a photo of the dead ghouls, I chose a direction at random and began to jog. When the tunnel forked, I went left and made my way deeper beneath the cemetery. Human bones were scattered along the passage. It looked like at least several generations of corpses had been stolen from their graves and had been consumed in the secret pathways beneath.
I came to another branch in the tunnel and couldn’t decide which direction to take. Sensing a ghoul approaching from the right, I hurried into the left passage again. Coming across more side tunnels, I ignored them and stuck to the main thoroughfare. Hopefully it would eventually carry me back to the surface.
Panic began to set in when I sensed more ghouls converging on me from behind. Increasing my speed, I tried to outrun them but they were moving just as quickly as I was. It was clear that they were herding me somewhere.
Bursting out into a large open area, I skidded to a stop when dozens of eyes swiveled to stare at me. Hissing hungrily, the ghouls attacked. I had enough time to shoot ten of them before they were on me. My gun was wrested away and my new leather jacket was torn off. Teeth sheared through clothes and into my arms and legs. They were seeking my arteries so I could bleed out quickly and they could then consume my flesh.
Screaming in agony, I finally broke through Reece’s shield and sent him a picture of what was happening to me. Where are you? His question was frantic when he realized that I was under attack.
I’m somewhere beneath the cemetery. I flashed an image of following the kid’s trail then lost the ability to think coherently as teeth tore into my throat. The guys were on the other side of town. They were too far away to come to my aid even if they could have somehow found their way beneath the ground.
Zeus knew I was in trouble and he was frantically trying to dig his way down to me. With my weapon gone and pinned down by multiple creatures that were almost as strong as I was, I was out of options. In a flash of clarity, I realized that I was going to die down here.
A bone poked into my back as teeth gnawed their way through my flesh towards my veins. It was a reminder that I wasn’t quite alon
e down here. I was surrounded by beings that could come to my aid if only I dared to use the talent that I’d been trying to deny existed within me. Their bodies might have been consumed by the ghouls, but I knew I possessed the power to resurrect the dead and to piece them back together again.
Desperate and determined to live, I stretched out with mental hands and beckoned to the long dead corpses. Bones stirred in the soil, but it wasn’t enough just to will them into existence. I called on the death magic that had been with me for my entire life thanks to my mother biting me when I’d been a baby. Using the blood that had been shed from my body, I shouted a command. “Rise!”
Green fog instantly sprang into being. It permeated the cave as the dead obeyed. Bones came together and flesh re-formed as my zombie minions came at my call. Badly formed and already rotting, they were far from perfect. I didn’t need them to be pretty. I just needed them to be strong enough for the task ahead. “Kill!” I ordered and again they obeyed.
The frenzied ghouls were ripped from me and were torn apart by undead hands. Too weak and dazed to move, I watched as the twenty zombies that I’d raised laid waste to the small horde of their distant brethren.
My wounds began to close, but I’d lost a lot of blood and I was dangerously close to passing out. I needed to get out of there, but I wouldn’t be able to get far on my own. As if reading my thought, one of the zombies broke off his attack and shambled over to me.
Kneeling beside me, his milky eyes stared into mine. “Can you take me back up to the surface?” I asked. He nodded creakily. “Do it,” I ordered and tried not to shudder when his skeletal arms picked me up.
He cradled me almost tenderly against his chest as we rose through the soil and emerged next to Zeus. Barking savagely, the Rottweiler lunged forward. He stopped short of mauling my minion’s leg at my mental command.